Scarred
by WeAreAllFrail
Summary: Just because they aren't visible doesn't mean they aren't there. When Bella moves to Forks after the death of her mother she is withdrawn and suffering. Edward has problems of his own, but can they come together to heal their scars? ExB OOC AH CUTTING!
1. Prologue

**Ok so this is my first ever story folks and I am about ready to crap myself 'cus I'm that nervous of the reponse I'll receive. **

**Now this is probably going to be wildly OOC just because I want to write a potty mouthed Edward! AH and AU aswell.**

**Disclaimer: If I was Stephenie Meyer I would've finished writing Midnight Sun by now.... Nothing belongs to me!  
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**Prologue**

_Her eyes spoke all kinds of shit to me.  
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As she focused on me with those glowing brown orbs, they spoke to me. I could hear every unspoken thought revolving in that head of hers.

Everything she _felt._

_She knew.  
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This wasn't meant to happen. No one was meant to want me, just like he'd always told me. I was a freak. I was Edward Cullen, Edward freaking Cullen, I wasn't that guy.

_But she was that girl.  
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I knew she'd never allowed anyone as close as she had me. So close that I had glimpsed past all those jagged scars marring her body, telling the story her lips refused to speak.

And something shifted painfully inside of me. Pain, but not pain at all; uncomfortable, yet completely right. I felt the throb, as that long dormant _thing_ inside of me pulsed back into life. It stuttered, hiccupped.

_But, didn't stop.  
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I heard it.

She heard it.

_I would never tell._

_I couldn't._

_'I love you.'  
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_**So what do we think? Continue? Give up? Please review, would love some feedback!**


	2. Chapter 1

**A/N: Hello, I'm back with the first chapter! Thank you for those of you who reviewd, so encouraging! I love you all!**

** I just wanted to explain a few things, the title 'Scarred' is just a working title so far and actually so is the summary, because I seriously have no idea where I'm taking this story.**

**I've always been one to give up after a page of writing because I am that fickle, so updates will probably take me a while, I'm sorry in advance.**

**Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Stephenie Meyer, I just make her characters suicidal!  
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**EPOV**

The flame burned bright, a whirling mixture of red and orange hues. My eyes wide and fixed, hypnotised by the flickering light.

28th June 2008.

12 years today.

Happy fucking anniversary.

Every year, I'd do the same, light a candle for her.

She would've gone to the church. But it didn't feel right to me. What benevolent God would let something like this happen to her? If he was really up there, full of fucking grace, why would he let her suffer like that? Why would he take her from me?

Besides I was pretty sure if I did step foot in a church the priest would leap on me as soon as he realised; waving his holy water at me, exorcising my demons. But some demons couldn't be exorcised, some were here to stay. And what more physical proof was there than me?

I watched the flame fade slightly and then burn brighter still, she was holding strong.

I wonder if he thought about her too, incarcerated in his piss-soaked cell. Did he even care enough in the first place for her to weigh on his mind? Did he remember her eyes, a piercing forest green like mine? The way she used to hum when she did the dishes, the way she sat me on her lap, her arms loose around me, as she knitted a jumper in my size, yarn in an ugly mustard yellow trailing along the threadbare carpet. Did he remember? Did he care?

Was he sorry?

And the tears squeezed acidly out of the corners of my eyes, just as they always did, when I thought about that night. I pressed the heels of my palms against the onslaught of tears. They didn't help, they just made you weak. I knew that, he'd drilled that particular proverb into me often enough. No, tears wouldn't help; I would carry on struggling for survival, as I always did, as I always would.

The wax pooled on the table as the candle melted down to a stub, valiantly fighting to stay alight.

Ephemeral.

Like her, like he had made her.

The tears spurted out with a vengeance. Tears didn't help, but they certainly didn't hurt. She deserved to be remembered like this. Someone needed to show that they cared she was gone. My body shook as silent sobs were wrenched out of my unresisting body. Somebody cared.

I fucking cared.

Anguish pierced my heart. Twelve fucking years without her and it still hurt the same. Each year the pain grew minutely more unbearable until I thought there was no way I would be able to make it through another year like this. And every year I did it again, curled into the foetal position on my bed, as if that could hold in the pain, fingernails digging into my palms leaving crescent shape marks embedded in my palms. And I wanted to scream, scream at him, scream at God, scream at her for fucking letting him do that to her.

But there was no sound.

I made no sound.

My mouth gaped wide open in a silent scream. I wasn't supposed to tell, I couldn't tell, I didn't tell.

I would never tell.

They had tried again and again to make me tell.

'Tell us Edward.'

'It's ok Edward, just tell us.'

'No one can hurt you now Edward, tell us '

But he could hurt me, couldn't they see? He was waiting to hurt me, just like he did to her. He thought it was me. He thought I told.

But I didn't! It wasn't fucking me!

I could feel the panic seeping through, my throat was constricting, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't fucking breathe. I groped at the sheets, fighting for air. My throat hurt, everything hurt. And I couldn't stop it, I couldn't stop the blackness from swallowing me, pulling me into oblivion.

And all the while I didn't make a sound.

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**A/N: So? Any good? I'm sorry it's short btw, it's just so hard! Please review and let me know what you think!**


	3. Chapter 2

**Back with the next chapter!**

**Now I only got one review, which is kind of sad, but hey I'll persevere, Rome was not built in a day and all that jazz...**

**So saying, if you're reading, please review, constructive criticism would be good, not just a hey yeh this story is like another one (how can you tell from simply the prologue?!), something that would actually help me. I know my writing is raw and I tend to overuse the rule of three and I'm crappy at dialogue, how could I make this better? Help me improve!**

**So saying this chapter is dedicated to _klsymrrsn_ who made me smile when I was feeling dejected!**

**Also to _Shazeen_ who encouraged me to post.**

**You are my two favourite people and I will write even if it's just for you!**

**A couple of notes, I've changed the Prologue, I know I'm annoying but it just didn't fit the story I was trying to tell, and I couldn't for the live of me write a weak Bella, she's just too strong!**

**Oh and Bella will now be christened Is (Read it and Weep, anyone??) To denote Is' POV I will use BPOV/IPOV so at least people know it's Bella even if she's calling herself something different!**

**Disclaimer: Everything belongs to the great Stephenie Meyer!  
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**BPOV/IPOV**

When I was fourteen years old, Renee sat me down. I could remember seeing that look on her face. The one I wore when I was being the parent. Now she was. It registered, but nothing like when she said that other word.

The one that strikes fear into every heart.

The one that conjures up images of thinning hair and death.

Death.

And now she was gone.

All the praying to a God I never believed in until I heard that word.

And nothing.

Because she was still gone.

'So Isabella, how are you getting on being back with your father?' Charlie had thought a grief counsellor would propel me into barrelling through the five stages of grief and out the other end.

'Fine, fine,' my standard response to every question asked of me. I could almost convince myself it was true.

I picked at the newly formed scab on my arm.

Almost.

'Really Isabella? Remember this is the truth zone.'

She sketched a wide circle with her arms. Truth zone? Was she kidding me? I was seventeen not seven.

'It's Is, Dr ....' Her name hadn't stuck, nothing seemed to stick anymore, not until I crawled into my hidey hole where nothing and no one could hurt me ever again, where I could be alone with my thoughts, my grief.

My pain.

She had been my sun. After all I was Charlie's daughter: quiet, solitary, perpetually trapped in darkness as I was, like a vampire in the daytime. Now that great ball of fire had permanently set and I was back here in Forks, the rain falling from the sky like tears from my heart.

'Purkiss, Isabella, Dr Purkiss.' I didn't bother to point out again that my name was Is. Isabella didn't exist anymore; she had died along with Renee back in Phoenix.

'Right, Purkiss,'

The woman named Purkiss sighed, she wasn't getting anywhere with me, just like I'd predicted to Charlie a week ago when he had picked me up from the airport. What had he expected, a miraculously bright and shiny new me? Or maybe he didn't want a new me, maybe he was trying to resurrect Bella. The same Bella, who could make his dinner, without stopping to think speculatively about the knife she was holding; the way the light from the fluorescents glinted off the untarnished steel; the way the handle fit my hand perfectly, like a glove: the same Bella who had wanted to live rather than hide.

Everything Is wasn't.

Everything I wasn't anymore.

'Well, I think we'll leave it there for today Isabella, we've made some real progress.' Still annoyingly chipper was Purkiss, no matter that I had yet to reveal anything to her emotionally.

Or physically.

It was as if I had become stagnant, rigidly fixed in the same spot since I had felt her life slipping away; the hand I had clasped so tightly, as if to forcibly keep her in this world, falling limp in my hold. I knew she was gone, but I couldn't say it. I couldn't show it, I couldn't blindly accept that she was a victim of fickle fate.

Instead that familiar stranger looked back at me from the mirror, as if wondering why the blood didn't show. I was bleeding from the inside, but it was as if my veins had constricted or my blood had coagulated, I don't know what! All I knew was that something had frozen in that instance that heart monitor had ceased its pitifully hopeful beeping. And there was no way out; no way to feel.

Why couldn't I feel anything?

My mother was lying six feet under and I felt nothing. What kind of fucked up daughter was I, that I felt nothing for the passing of the woman who gave birth to me, who nurtured and cared for me? It wasn't right, it was all wrong. I know I was never the overly emotional type, but I had always thought that I possessed some redeeming human features.

What was wrong with me?

Because I had never shed a tear for Renee.

Not one solitary tear for my mother.

And there it was - I was a freak, I was inhuman, I was emotionally retarded.

There was no other choice but to make amends, to show that I cared. And I did, I honestly cared. So I bled for her where she could see, to climb to unparalleled ecstasy on a wave of pure unadulterated pain and in that pain came pleasure and finally release.

Release from the monster I had become.

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**Ok so I know, not very long again, but I'm trying to build up to longer pieces.**

**Oh and Grey's Anatomy reference anyone? Oooo and Marked By PC and Kristin Cast (which is fabulous by the by!)**

**Please review, they make me go all giggly... :D**


	4. Chapter 3

**A/N: Ok so I'm officially the crappest person ever! I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update, but I've had alot of uni work to catch up on, so that explains why this is so short. I'm sorry. it just seemed a good place to stop. You might've been expecting Edward's POV, so was I, but that kinda fell through, so I'm sticking with Bella, it'll be more mysterious this way!**

**Let me know if you have any questions!  
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**Disclaimer: I own nothing!**

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**BPOV/IPOV**

It had been a month since I'd somehow landed in the rainy town of Forks. One month of self imposed incarceration, which to be frankly honest meant hiding.

Hiding from reality.

Somewhere along the way it seemed as if I'd lost the ability to truly differentiate between what was just rolling around inside my head and what was right there in front of me. The two had amalgamated to form a halfway place from where I seemed to peer out at the rest of the world, as if not quite comprehending that it was actually there.

Because I wasn't really there.

'Purkiss, Dr. Purkiss' couldn't extract me from this funk I had fallen into, although she pulled every psychiatric trick she could think of out of the proverbial bag.

Charlie was just as helpless.

He knew, of course.

It was hard to explain away each new scar that appeared. I had taken to wearing long sleeved tops and jeans, not that I'd ever been much of a skirt girl, but now Is had a uniform of sorts – clothes that concealed even the barest expanse of skin.

Because this _thing_ didn't concern anyone else, no one but me. It was my problem, my way of dealing. I knew Charlie didn't understand, no one understood, I got that, so I didn't want to worry him any further I suppose.

So I pretended.

I pretended everything was ok.

So here I was, a month later, starting at Forks High School.

I tried to block out Bella's reactions at the thought of starting at a new school where everyone knew each other and Isabella Swan was the interloper. I tried to stop my hands from dampening with sweat or my fingers from drumming incessantly on the steering wheel as I waited at a red light.

I tried to think like Is.

I snorted to myself; I was beginning to sound like I had a multiple personality disorder. I'm Is, no I'm Bella, no I'm Is, what the hell was wrong with me? Even I didn't know who I wanted to be. How was anyone else supposed to know?

I sighed as I pulled into the parking lot. It was full of cars and kids having their mini reunions after summer vacation. I looked around for a parking spot and managed to shimmy my hulking great, red truck into a space next to a shiny, silver Volvo. I had a quick scout around as I got out and heaved another sigh. All of the girls seemed to be wearing tiny skirts or dresses or shorts, it was September after all, still summer, at least as summery as it got for Forks. Already I felt like a freak in my jeans and long sleeved blue t-shirt. I didn't fit in.

Just like I hadn't fit in anywhere without Renee.

I grabbed my rucksack and keeping my head down made my way towards a building, any building assuming I'd find the reception area. It couldn't be that difficult right?

Oh how wrong I would turn out to be.

Even by staring at the gravel patterns on the ground and refusing to make eye contact, I couldn't escape their insatiable curiosity. I was the shiny new toy after all, the mouse all the big cats were fighting over. Too bad this toy was already broken. Well, maybe not broken, a little worse for wear perhaps. I wasn't defeated yet, I just wasn't quite whole and I was fine with that – that missing part could represent the humanity that I had misplaced somewhere along the way.

A shadow crossed my path; I studied it, probably a guy I'd say, unless there was a girl around here sporting a buzz cut or worse a shiny, bald head. I smirked to myself, I'd never been particularly vain, but it was nice to know I cared about something, even if it was the condition of my hair. I carried on walking forward; maybe this guy/person/whatever would get out of my friggin' way if I just pretended he wasn't there.

My mistake.

He seemed determined to meet my acquaintance.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

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**Oooooo who is this person? Intrigued? Click the review button....**

**Oh and shameless pimping - like Chuck and Blair? Check out my other fic - 7 sides of Blair Waldorf according to Chuck Bass! (pheeeww long title!)  
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